


heart-shaped box

by heydilly



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Baking, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 18:16:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13769793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heydilly/pseuds/heydilly
Summary: With Valentine's Day coming up, Yahaba has a not-so-brilliant idea to bake cookies. They're sweet, delicious, and everyone loves them.Except he doesn't know how to bake cookies. He doesn't even know how tobake, which may, in some ways, cause a few difficulties.Just a few.





	heart-shaped box

Yahaba is good at a certain handful of things in life. He has good hands for setting (though they're dry and calloused from hours of practice), he's good at volleyball, he gets fairly good grades. And he hopes (hopes!) that he's a good boyfriend, which, conveniently enough, he has a wide-open opportunity to prove now.   
  
The day is February 13th. He stares at the screen of his phone with a level of scrutiny so high that he didn't know it was even possible before, and the reason why is because what he's looking at is a recipe.

A baking recipe. For  _cookies._

He was planning on buying Kyoutani a basic gift, despite Valentine's Day being pretty small in Japan—a stuffed animal, chocolates, and flowers. The perfect chance for Yahaba to humiliate him _and_ let him know that he's appreciated, all in one neatly-wrapped package. 

And then he'd let it slip to Oikawa during practice, who had quite promptly hit him upside the head.

"You can't do that!" Oikawa chided. "You really think Kyouken-chan is going to appreciate  _that?_ You'd be better off buying him a box of fried chicken!" Yahaba winced. He had a good point there.

"Why don't you make him something yourself? I personally recommend milk bread, but there's always brownies, cake, cookies-"

"I'll do that," Yahaba interjected. "Cookies are easy, right?"

"Fairly so," Oikawa shrugged. "Have you baked before/"

"Nope. But how hard can it be?"

 

And now Yahaba wants to eat his own words, because damn it, all the Japanese recipes online are too complex to follow, and none of the English ones come with a translation. 

ARGH. He caves in, swiping on his phone and pressing the call button. 

"Watari?"

_"Hey, what's up?"_

"Not much. Um, can you come over? I need your help."

_"With what?"_

"...Can you teach me how to bake?"

 

* * *

 

"Step one," Watari grins. "Put on an apron." 

"Got it," Yahaba nods, grabbing a white piece of fabric off the oven handle and wrapping it around his waist.

"Dude," Watari says. "That's a towel."

"Oh." 

"Yeah, let's just move on," Watari says dismissively. "Anyway, what you want to do now is whip the eggs until they're soft and make peaks." 

"Okay," Yahaba says, cracking the eggs on the side of a bowl before letting the yolk fall into the bottom. He spoons in melted butter and sugar before whipping it with a kitchen mixer, the final result looking...actually acceptable, surprisingly.

"Nice," Watari grins, giving him a thumbs-up. "Now you have to mix in the flour and baking soda." Yahaba opens a kitchen cabinet and pulls out a package of flour and a little container of baking soda. He measures out a good two-hundred grams, and then dumps all of the contents into the bowl. 

After mixing—or folding, which Yahaba doesn't really understand—all of it together, it clumps into a dough. A normal, basic, cookie dough. Thank god. 

Watari helps him roll the dough into balls on a baking pan lined with parchment paper, until, finally, it's ready to ascend to its final stage of baking evolution.

"Doesn't it feel like you're waving your children off for college or something when you put it in the oven?" he says wistfully. 

"Gosh, now I'm tearing up," Watari laughs. "Wait, doesn't that mean these are you and Kyoutani's adopted kids?"

"Does that also make me a future cannibal?"

"I knew you were hiding something," Watari says, narrowing his eyes in fake-suspicion. "Speaking of which, though, when are you giving these to him?"

"Um," Yahaba hesitates. "I was thinking before morning practice?"

Watari winces. "I don't know, man. The rest of the team is never going to let you live it down if they see you come in with a box of cookies. On _Valentine's Day."_

"True," Yahaba admits. "And then Kyoutani might actually commit a mass murder. Not if I do it first, that is."

"I hope you spare me," Watari snorts. 

"I'll try," Yahaba grins. 

"And, you never know, I might not even end up giving him cookies."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it all depends on how these turn out. Like, who knows, maybe the baking process turns it into crap or something..."

 

* * *

 

"Shit," Yahaba says, as soon as he takes a bite out of the first cookie. Or, well, when he  _tries_ to take a bite. "It's rock hard." 

"You jinxed yourself, didn't you?" Watari sighs. 

"I don't even know what we did wrong," Yahaba frowns. "Do you know what happened?"

"I have no idea," Watari says. "Did you get all the ingredients right?"

"Let me see," Yahaba says, standing up to scan the mass of supplies on his kitchen counter. "Eggs, check; butter, check; sugar, check; flour, check,  baking soda, ch—"

"Wait, wait, wait," Watari interjects. A look of realization dawns upon his face. "Oh.  _Oh."_

"What?"

"This isn't baking soda," he explains, holding up the little container. "It's baking  _powder."_

"Ughh," Yahaba groans, throwing his head back. "What's the difference?"

"Baking powder makes it harder," Watari says. "Baking soda makes them softer."

Yahaba nods, almost mechanically. "Okay, I swear I'm going to remember that for my second batch."

"It should turn out perfect," Watari says confidently. "All you did this time was mix up one ingredient, and it's only your first try. That's pretty impressive."

"Aw," Yahaba smiles sweetly. "You're just—" He grabs a stick of butter and waves it in the air. _"—buttering_ me up."

"Oh, please don't." 

 

* * *

 

The second time doesn't work. Or the third time. Or the fourth, or fifth, or sixth. 

"Seventh time's the charm," Yahaba says weakly. He's covered head-to-toe in flour. His hands are crusted over with dried-up dough. The smell of vanilla has gotten so strong that it's giving him a headache. 

He wants to cry. Well, first Yahaba wants to call Kyoutani, so he can hug him and kiss him and cry into his shoulder pathetically.

"I'm sorry, Yahaba, but...I don't think it's going to work," Watari says glumly. "Maybe you can just get Kyoutani something-"

"I can't!" he insists. "This is the one day of the year I get to do something special, and I've already put _hours_ into this! It's too late for me to back out."

"It doesn't work like that," Watari says, shaking his head. "It's not like you can only show that you love someone on Valentine's Day! Just because you don't give them something amazing, doesn't mean you're not showing that you still appreciate them."

"Besides," he continues, "have you even told Kyoutani that you love him yet?"

"That—it—I—" Yahaba sputters, feeling the tips of his ears turn pink. 

"Not yet," he mumbles, taking the opportunity to stare at his shoelaces. "I was planning on doing it tomorrow."

Watari gives him a knowing look. "See what I mean? Why didn't you tell him on any other day?"

"I don't know," Yahaba admits. "I just—it never felt like the right time, and it made sense to do it on a day that wouldn't be... _weird,_ or too soon."

"Don't worry about it," Watari says assuredly. "Just get him something really basic—or don't get him anything! You'll be fine. It's not like he's going to dump you on the spot."

"Are you sure?" Yahaba asks nervously. He wishes he wasn't anxious, but he can't help it. Kyoutani just makes him feel like that sometimes. Nervous, nervous, nervous. That _butterflies-in-your-stomach_ type of way.

"Very sure," Watari agrees. "As your token straight friend, it definitely gets all the ladies, so this should totally work for you!"

"Wait, that doesn't make-"

"Anyway, I should get going soon," Watari says apologetically, giving Yahaba a consoling pat on the back. "But good luck! Go get 'em, tiger."

Yahaba sighs, but smiles anyway. "I'll try." 

 

The cookies were still a giant flop, but he supposes that he really can't go wrong with an assortment of chocolates in a heart-shaped box. 

 

* * *

 

 

"Hi," he says breathlessly. He'd told Kyoutani to meet him at the front doors of the gymnasium, a few minutes before anyone else was sure to arrive. Kyoutani came late anyway. "Happy Valentine's Day."

The tips of Kyoutani's ears turn pink. "You too," he mutters, before digging into his sports bag to reveal, much to Yahaba's horror, what looks like a baking tin.

"These are for me?"

"Yeah," Kyoutani nods. "There's butter in them. Sorry if you're allergic, but don't blame me for eating it when you die."

"Wait, don't tell me they're sugar cookies," Yahaba says, gently prying off the lid. 

"They are," Kyoutani frowns. "Why?"

"Oh, um, it's nothing, I just—oh my _god,"_ Yahaba says through a mouthful of cookie. "This is so good, I actually just took a bite of heaven."

"Shut up," Kyoutani says, which Yahaba has taken to mean thank you in his vocabulary.

"Did you bake them yourself?"

"Yeah. It was pretty easy." At this, Yahaba resists the urge to cringe. _Pretty easy?_ He's never going to look at flour the same way after what happened to him and Watari.

"Speaking of which," he says, letting out a nervous laugh that sounds far squeakier than what he intended. "I got you something, too." He pulls out a heart-shaped box from behind his back and places it in Kyoutani's hands. "Hope you like it."

Kyoutani examines it with his eyebrows furrowed as he unties the ribbon and pulls off the lid. 

For a moment, there is only silence. Within that silence, Yahaba feels his heartrate rise at _least_ twenty beats per second, surely.

"Chicken," Kyoutani says finally. "You got me a package of famima chicken."

"That's not all," Yahaba grins. "There's a gift card for the convenience store, too. It should cover at least fifty individually-wrapped pieces." 

"I hate you," Kyoutani says, even though there's no bite in his voice. "I hate you so much."

Yahaba's heartrate gets faster again. _Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum._

"I love you, too," he breathes out, the words leaving his mouth so fast that he doesn't have time to regret it or moan in agony or take it back. 

Kyoutani stares at him, eyes wide, and  _shit,_ what if he made a mistake? What if Kyoutani thinks he's rushing things now, what if he doesn't like it, what if-"

Kyoutani cuts him off by pressing his lips against Yahaba's, and he thinks his heart momentarily stops. It tastes sweet. Like butter and sugar. 

"Sorry," he murmurs when they pull away. "I shouldn't have-"

"Shut up," Kyoutani snipes, and then, quieter, "you don't need to say it for me to know it."

 

And then he leans in for another kiss. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> this was inspired by the lovely umisabaku's fic "500 variations of sugar and butter" which is amazing!! this is also my work for the hq valentine's day exchange:) thanks for reading!! xx


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